Human nature and its conflict with the idealized knighthood

of the romance genre in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

By José Luis Guerrero Cervantes

The typical hero of the medieval romance genre lives in a

magic world where his virtues allow him to overcome any

challenge or defeat any enemy he would face. Examples of

this kind of heroes are 14th-century Thomas Chestre’s

Breton lay Sir Launfal, or the anonymous Sir Orpheo. The

characters’ behavior reflects the complex social and

religious patterns of the chivalry code that had to be

observed at that time, that is, the Courtesan culture. Love

relationships and the cult devoted to women were directly

related to “courteous love” or “amour courtois”1.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it is possible to

identify two elements of romance: the magic world of

frightening challenges and the social environment where the

courteous behavior was necessary to be observed in order to

fulfill a certain social stereotype. However, it does not

fit completely with the characteristics of this genre.

There is a third element that differentiates this work from

traditional romances. Sir Gawain is not an idealized,

perfect hero that is predestinated to defeat evil in an

adventure. He is a knight with exceptional virtues that

possesses no more capacities or abilities than those of a

simple human being. The story then takes place in a more

1 C.S. Lewis, The allegory of love. Oxford University Press. 1977. p. 2.

credible “reality” (since it belongs to a literary fiction

after all) that the poet creates to make his hero and his

conflict more credible and, therefore, more praiseworthy.

The most important conflict of the story is the fulfillment

of the given word of Sir Gawain to a magic being that seems

to be an insurmountable obstacle for any knight:

And slashed swiftly down on the exposed part,

So that the sharp blade sheared through,
shattering the bones, sank deep in the sleek
flesh, split it in two, and the
scintillating steel struck the ground. The
fair head fell from the neck, struck the
floor, and people spurned it as it rolled
around. Blood spurted from the body, bright
against the green. Yet the fellow did not
fall, nor falter one whit, but stoutly
sprang forward on legs still sturdy, roughly
reached out among the ranks of nobles,
seized his splendid head and straightway
lifted it.2
(423-433)

It is precisely the fulfillment of the given word what can

be considered a physical trial since Sir Gawain has to

receive a strike of the Green Knight’s axe in payment for

the one he gave him according to what was agreed by both

parts. Here it the moral trial, to break the agreement will

bring shame to Gawain. Gawain is forced to a situation

where he has to choose between his honor and his life. This

way, the poet puts Sir Gawain not in the conventional

situation found in romances but in a more complex one. The

infallibility of the knight is substituted for human

nature.

2 All the quotations of the poem were taken of the translation made by Bryan
Stone in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Penguin, 1988, pp. 21-115.
It is possible to establish three changes in Sir Gawain’s

behavior that determine the conflict he faces and the

elements that he uses to solve it. The first is at the very

beginning of the poem, when Sir Gawain is only one member

of the Rounded Table.

The conflict comes up in King Arthur’s court when the Green

Knight challenges the king and his knights:

When none came to accord with him, he

coughed aloud, then pulled himself up
proudly, and spoke as follows: ‘What, is
this Arthur’s house, the honour of which is
bruited abroad so abundantly? Has your pride
disappeared? Your prowess gone? Your
victories, your valour, your vaunts, where
are they?[…] Upon this, he laughed so loudly
that the lord grieved. His fair features
filled with blood for shame.
(307-318)

Until here both the reader and the people in the scene are

not able to imagine who is going to accept the challenge.

It has been said previously in this paper that this writing

takes from romance the magic world of frightening

challenges, which is here presented. Color here plays an

important role. The audience is astonished by the

appearance of the challenger, particularly, his color. It

is not the body of the Green Knight what mainly stands out,

but the fact that everything on him, his horse and even his

hair and skin are green. It is important to remember,

Burrow states, that “green was the colour of faries, the

colour of the death, and the colour of the devil”.3 In

fact, the Green Knight can be considered as the

representation of death itself, challenging men to lose

their life in order to keep their honor. The parallelism of

the Green Knight as representation of the Death itself

becomes clearer if it is noticed that the deadline set by

the Green Knight can perfectly work as the inevitable fate

that every human being on this earth has to face someday:

the end of his life.

The second moment happens in the second fitt, a moment

before Sir Gawain accepts to wear the green belt offered by

Bertilak’s wife. Until here, Sir Gawain had played the role

of the ideal knight that has not violated a word of the

chivalry code symbolized by the star on his shield:

First he was found faultless in his five wits.

Next, his five fingers never failed the
knight. And all his trust on earth was in the
five wounds which came to Christ on the Cross,
as the Creed tells. And whenever the bold man
was busy on the battlefield, through all other
things he thought on this, that his prowess
all depended on the five pure Joys that the
holy Queen of Heaven had of her Child.
(640-647)

Gawain has given his word to look for the Green Knight and

fulfill his part of the agreement. He knows the date of his

death and patiently travels all around England looking for

the Green Chapel. There is a triple test here for Gawain:

3 J.A. Burrow. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Routledge. London.
1965. p. 14.
the first is physical, implying to suffer hunger, thirst,

tiredness, and the inclemency of the weather:

Half-slain by the sleet, he slept in his

armour night after night among the naked
rocks, where the cold streams splashed from
the steep crests or hung over his head in hard
icicles.
(729-732)

The second is spiritual; he suffered physically for no

other reward than to be beheaded. His thoughts about his

present situation and his own future death test his

integrity. In this part of the poem is possible to

distinguish the human nature of a man in need:

He crossed himself and cried

For his sins, and said, ‘Christ speed
My cause, his cross my guide!
So prayed he, spurring his steed.
(773-774)

Once he arrives and is hosted in Bertilak’s castle, the

luck of the knight seems to change. He is welcome and

attended in all aspects, what gives Sir Gawain a moment of

apparently relief. However, the hardest of all the tests

was about to start: the moral one. After the great effort

done to survive in the wild, Gawain is put in a more

comfortable situation that makes him to lower his guard:

“The knight rejoiced anew, / For the wine his spirits whet”

(899-900). As the deadline is coming sooner, Gawain gets

more stressed. When only three days remain to his final

encounter with the Green Knight, the test is performed:

 […] you shall lie long in your room, late and
at ease Tomorrow till the time of mass, and
the take your meal When you will, with my wife
beside you To comfort you with her company
till I come back to court. You stay, And I
shall get up at dawn. I will to the hunt away.
[…] ‘Moreover’, said the man, ‘Let us make a
bargain That whatever I win in the woods be
yours, and any achievement you chance on here,
you exchange for it Sweet sir, truly swear to
such a bartering, Whether fair fortune on foul
befall from it.’
(1096-1109)

The test requires the creation of certain conditions that

characterize the typical situation for a couple to fall in

sin: the lord of the castle is away, his wife, in secret,

has managed herself to enter her husband’s guest.

Bertilak’s wife uses the liberties that are allowed in the

courtesan love code to test the hero. She uses Gawain’s

fame to do a series of proposals about how a knight needs

to behave with women. In the first encounter Gawain is

taken by surprised and he had troubles for gently refusing

the proposals of Bertilak’s wife. During the second meeting

Gawains looks more secure, however the insistence of the

lady are much more erotic and tempting. In the third

meeting Gawain managed himself to resist to the solicitudes

of the lady. It can be observed here that the behavior that

Gawain shows needs to be perfect to the eyes of God and

society, that is, to personify a society that is ruled by

reason and faith.

Finally, the lady finds a tiny hole in Gawain’s stoic

defenses: his encounter with the Green Knight.

This is the moment where the third moment takes place just

when Sir Gawain accepts the belt and continues until he

goes back Camelot in the fourth fitt.

Gawain reflected the ideals of perfection before God and

society by resisting to the lady’s proposals and her gifts.

But his encounter with the Green Knight (and his imminent

death) has produced in Gawain’s human nature a feeling that

is inevitable to experiment in such circumstances: the

survival sense. This feeling produces in Gawain a change in

his, apparently, immovable convictions and interchange his

faith for fetishism:

For the man that binds his body with this belt
of green, As long as he laps it closely about
him, No hero under heaven can hack him to
pieces, For he cannot be killed by any cunning
on earth.
(1851-1854)

By accepting the belt and not telling Bertilak anything

about it, Gawain’s loyalty toward his host fails, the

agreement is broken and Gawain becomes then in a liar and a

hypocrite. Gawain faces the Green Knight and he is revealed

that everything was planned by Bertilak to test him. Gawain

realizes his fault and denies to return to Bertilak’s

castle and return to Camelot.

Here the circle is closed, despite Gawain has shown to be

just a human and, therefore, fallible; Gawain goes back to

take his place in the Rounded Table, just like in the

beginning of the poem, neither in a higher, nor in an

inferior state.

Therefore, it possible to conclude that Sir Gawain and the

Green Knight is a narrative poem that is based on adventure

and agreements in order to create tests to which the hero,

Sir Gawain, is going to be exposed.

The typical topic of the romance genre, the lady in help

that is rescue by a knight, is put aside to create tests in

three different levels: physical, spiritual and moral. The

knight is exposed to lose his most valuable things: his

life, his moral, and his honor.

The poet creates a more “real” argument by using a setting

that mixes magic with reality. In addition, the situations

to which the hero is exposed present problematic dilemmas

that deals with values and expectations related to human

nature.
 Bibliography

 Brooks and Warren. Understanding Fiction: What

character reveals. Appleton-Centruy Crofts, Division

of Meredith Co. Nueva York. 1959.

 Burrow, J. A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight, Routledge. London. 1965.

 Lewis, C. S. The allegory of love. Oxford University

Press. Oxford. 1977.

 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2a. Edition. Bryan

Stone (trad). Penguin Classics. London. 1988.